The Hormone Factory (15 page)

Her voice grew so quiet that I had a hard time hearing her. “Her apron was torn to shreds, she was bleeding, Mr. Motke. The devil’s got into your brother, that’s the only explanation.” Agnes was now sobbing loudly. “I didn’t know what to do. Nobody knew what to do, Mr. Motke.”

Panic seized me by the throat. Goddammit, what had that nitwit done? When an angel turns into a devil, he’s the vilest of them all.

“How long ago was this,” I snapped at Agnes, “and where the hell is Aaron, and where the hell is Rosie?”

I had to act quickly. This was a complete and utter catastrophe.

“Mr. Aaron hasn’t come out of his room,” said Agnes, glancing anxiously at the door, as if he might burst in at any moment. “You can still hear him roar once in a while,” she whispered, leaning closer to me, as if it had suddenly occurred to her that the monster might have heard the whole thing. “And Rosie—I ran after her. I lent her my coat and sent her home.”

“Damn!”
I exclaimed. A badly bruised and battered Rosie, leaving the office in full sight of the administrative staff, and going home to her poverty-stricken parents in a hysterical state—it was the worst possible scenario.

“How long ago did she leave and where does she live?”

“She lives on the other side of the tracks, not far from here,” Agnes replied, looking at me nervously. “I couldn’t send her back down to export in that state, Mr. Motke, now could I?”

“No,” I said, “you’re right, you couldn’t. Listen to me, Agnes. Go after Rosie immediately and tell her to come back here, and her parents too; if they’re home, that is. I must speak to her or all of them before they decide to take any other steps. Tell them I am just as appalled as they are over what happened, and I don’t intend to sweep this thing under the carpet. Justice will be done. But in order for that to happen, she must come see me. I promise she will not have to see my brother. Go, right now. And not a word to anyone.”

Agnes left, glad to be able to get out of the office and do something useful.

I took a deep breath and sat down at my desk in order to organize my thoughts. What a catastrophe. Aaron finally gets a bit of spunk in him, and what happens? He goes and screws it up—big time. I tried to recall our exchange of a few weeks back. Hadn’t he mentioned being afraid of the new power that was being unleashed in him? It should have set off all kinds of alarm bells, and I’d simply missed it. How
could
I have been so blithe about it all, so blind to his struggle?

The sheer number of witnesses to Aaron’s testosterone explosion meant there was no hope of keeping it quiet. An overdose of the soul hormone had delivered a Trojan horse into our midst. My God, a brutal rape! Aaron was caught like a rat in a trap. I didn’t see how I could rescue him now; the whole debacle had been too public and too violent. I had to get my brother out of the office before Rosie and her parents got here.

Entering his room, I recoiled in horror. His usually immaculate office had turned to havoc. Tumbled chairs left and right, the carpet crumpled and covered in broken glass (from the looks of it, it was the amber-colored designer vase Rivka had given him on his last birthday), files and papers strewn everywhere, everything pointing to a fierce struggle that had taken place there. And in the midst of all the mess, Aaron lay facedown on the carpet, his trousers down around his knees. He reminded me of a stranded whale on some filthy beach. My brother was bawling, loudly and wretchedly, with long, choking gasps. Was there anything I could do to turn this disaster around?

I shut the door carefully, walked up to him, and kneeled down by his side.

“Aaron,” I said softly, touching his back, “come on, get up, man, let me help you pull your pants up.”

Aaron’s bellow turned into a howl of despair, like a wolf letting the rest of the pack know he’s in grave danger. He stared at me, dazed. His face was covered in blood; Rosie must have fought back like a wildcat. Brusquely, he shook my hand off his back. My presence seemed to whip him into an even greater fury.

“You and your soul glands! Is this what you wanted for me, you schmuck? You’ve finally done it, I’ve finally turned into as big a creep as you. Now we are one, the same lousy piece of scum, only in two different bodies.”

I tried to pull up his trousers, but he slapped my hand away hard. “Don’t touch me, don’t you dare lay a finger on me,” he roared, but then hauled himself to a sitting position, pulled up his pants, sobbing and groaning, and buckled his belt. I poured him a glass of water and handed it to him. Refusing to look at me, he took a sip and, staring at a large amber shard from the broken vase, started mumbling to himself in an expressionless voice. “I didn’t want to, I didn’t mean to. I tried to resist it, with all my might.” He raised his head and looked at me with eyes that did not see me. “She was so scared of me, so terrified. No, not of me. It wasn’t
me
.”

And as he spat out those last words, his voice growing louder again, he stood up, picked up the broken piece of glass, and started waving it at me. I got up too, and began backing up slowly, not daring to look away, toward the door.

“It was
you
,” he thundered, stabbing the shard in my direction, “it was
your
voice. You were there all the time I was doing it, you were laughing, urging me on, I mean, you were inside my head.” Dropping the piece of glass, he began hammering his fists against his forehead, as if trying to brain himself. “Inside my body.
You
forced me to, you were turning me into
you
.
I
didn’t want to do it!”

Then he collapsed again, banging his head on the parquet floor, howling at the top of his lungs.

I realized I had to get out of there. I wasn’t the right person to calm him down; on the contrary, I was the wind fanning the flames. Quietly I left the room, closed the door behind me, turned the key in the lock, and dashed into my office. There I rang Rivka, who was fortunately home, and informed her without going into detail that Aaron was in a bad way.

“Alert the doctor and ask him to come here on the double, with however many rapidly working sedatives he has on hand. It’s an emergency. And please hurry over here yourself.”

Once Aaron was sedated, Rivka and the doctor would be able to get him home, which would give me the chance to talk to Rosie and her parents in peace. I picked up the carafe I kept in my office and poured myself a glass of water, then sat down at my desk and tried to think what I should do next.

25 …

Agnes returned empty-handed; Rosie hadn’t been home. She had encountered only the mother, who’d been greatly alarmed to find the executive secretary on her doorstep in search of her daughter. What had that girl done now? she’d wanted to know. Agnes had said something noncommittal and left in a hurry.

She was looking at me anxiously; I felt my panic rise. Where
was
that little bitch? Had she gone straight to the police? It seemed rather unlikely, since the Rosie I knew was the guilt-ridden sort; she’d be too ashamed to have her disgrace be known. Maybe she’d gone off someplace to hide. Or, God forbid, she was licking her wounds at the house of a friend.

I drummed my fingers on the desktop. Had the entire office staff not witnessed Rosie’s spectacular flight, I could have tried to hush up the whole affair. I could have tried paying the girl off with a tidy little sum, but since the whole office had seen her in her distressed state, it was too much of a risk.
One person’s secret is shared by God alone; a secret shared by two soon to all is known
. There was nothing else for it: unless I wanted to be dragged down with him in his fall, I would have to sacrifice my brother. Sometimes one has to give up one’s beard in order to
save one’s head. Yes, I’d go to the police and report to them what had happened, and do everything I could to save Aaron. Everything, that is, except jeopardize myself or discredit our first real scientific breakthrough.

• • •

As I walked into the police station my heart sank. The fat sergeant, seated at a desk dwarfed by his enormous bulk, was busy jotting something down, and across from him sat two women with their backs to me. I immediately recognized Rosie’s skinny, huddled form shivering in Agnes’s coat, jiggling the fingers of her startlingly large hands more nervously than ever; it looked as if she were typing on an invisible typewriter. And, what do you know? Next to her sat that devil spawn Bertha in all her glory. Could it get any worse? The fact that sweet little Rosie had apparently run into that tart Bertha—it was the worst possible luck. For a moment I was tempted to turn and run, but Bertha looked up and saw me. She jerked her chin and nudged Rosie with her elbow, saying “There he is.” Then, addressing me with a note of triumph in her voice, she said, “Yer gonna get it now, Jewboy, like a tomcat getting its nuts lopped off.”

Rosie cringed, and the sergeant looked up. He hauled himself to his feet and came forward, shushing Bertha with a hand gesture.

“Mr. De Paauw,” he said, coming up to me with his hand outstretched, “it’s good of you to come. I was just about to send some of my men to your office to investigate the situation. Please, take a seat.”

He pointed to the chairs in front of his desk and then realized they were already taken. “Girlies,” he said, “I’ve heard enough for now, you can go. You’ll be hearing from me.”

I saw Bertha bristling. She glared at the fat officer and exclaimed indignantly, “Ain’t you gonna lock ’im up, the kike? Are you gonna let him blow smoke up yer ass, this prick who can’t keep his dick in his pants?”

The sergeant’s face grew red. “You don’t talk that way to Mr. De Paauw. Get out!” he reprimanded the devil-bitch.

Rosie hurried past me on her way out the door, refusing to look at me. Bertha slowly hoisted her fat ass out of the chair and stalked past me with a haughty look, mouthing, “Oh, yeah, how could we ferget, rich birds uvva feather stick together.”

I looked her straight in the eye and said, “Don’t bother coming back to work, you little bitch. Girls who talk about their boss that way aren’t wanted. And don’t ever let me hear you’ve been spreading more dirty rumors, or your dad’s a goner too.”

Bertha went as red as a tom turkey, and stomped angrily outside, yelling, “Jest go to hell, you bastard!” She stuck her head around the door one more time to scream at the police officer, “Whatever he tells you, he’s lyin’ through his stinkin’ teeth!”

In the ensuing silence I went and took a seat. The sergeant sighed.

“Mr. De Paauw, I’ll get straight to the point. This is an extremely serious situation we have here. Even if only a fraction of the hog-wash I was just told turns out to be true, the whole town’s gonna be up in arms, you can bet on that. I cannot let this slide. That heavy one, the fat tart, she clearly has a bone to pick with you, and I’m going to take anything she says with a grain of salt.”

As he spoke, he picked up a sheet from the stack in front of him and started tearing it into little pieces with a triumphant look in my direction. He stood up and let the scraps flutter into the wastebasket, then rubbed his hands as if to cleanse them of the filthy words written there. Taking his seat again, he went on.
“But that quiet little girl, she’s been dreadfully misused; that’s something we cannot ignore. It’s going to have to go to court, without a doubt. Your brother cannot escape punishment.”

I let his words sink in. If I read him correctly, this swaggering cop had just admitted, before I’d even tried justifying myself, that he was prepared to go along with the very strategy I had worked out on my way over! The statement fat Bertha must have given him in gory detail about our disports on my sofa (although she’d almost certainly omitted the fact that my exertions had taken place with her full consent) now lay in shreds in his wastebasket. Only Rosie’s complaint still stood. It remained to be seen if the poor abused girl had confined herself to reporting only that afternoon’s rape, or had also mentioned my own habit of fooling around with her, which she, unlike Bertha, had never openly encouraged.

The officer did not leave me in the dark long. “That bitch tried to get the poor little thing to say that she had been abused by you as well, but the victim herself has given no indication that this is indeed the case.”

I managed to suppress a sigh of relief. I seemed to have dodged the bullet. As far as Aaron went, I’d have to try to salvage what could still be salvaged, being careful, however, to avoid any publicity that could negatively affect Rafaël’s discovery. Otherwise we might as well kiss the testosterone drugs goodbye.

I explained to the officer that my brother had always been an open book, a man with a sterling reputation. In the past few months Aaron had sunk into a deep depression, and had been taking a number of different medications, a poisonous cocktail that must have set off this blind frenzy. A physician would be called in to confirm this explanation, and would determine that my brother had not been in control of his faculties and therefore
was not fully accountable for his actions. The policeman seemed relieved to have the matter resolved so easily. We agreed that Aaron would come to the police station the next day to give himself up, thereby avoiding the mortification of an arrest at work or at home, which would only invite further gossip. I thanked the fellow for being so understanding, assuring him that if I could ever be of service to him in the future, my door was always open.

Once outside again, I took a deep gulp of the fresh night air. Depressing as it was to know that my brother would have to spend the foreseeable future behind bars, I couldn’t help but feel relief over the way the interview with the cop had gone.

26 …

In the weeks following that catastrophic day, I was forced to pull out all the stops to save my own skin and the firm’s good name.

After my productive visit to the constabulary, I hurried back to the factory, where the night shift had just come on. To forestall further gossip, I summoned the factory foremen and supervisors and gave them a short, businesslike update on what had happened. The ladies and gentlemen listened to my story in a state of shock. Aaron was a beloved figure to the workforce, and, like Agnes, no one could even imagine the moody but kindhearted pushover being capable of such an outburst. I disclosed that the authorities had been informed, and that my brother would be going to the police station the next day to give himself up. He would not escape punishment. I asked them to spread the word to their workers and said that gossip about the incident would not be tolerated. Then I rushed over to Aaron’s house, where I found the G.P. and Rivka, who was extremely upset. The good doctor had injected my brother with a healthy dose of tranquilizer and, when that hadn’t had the required effect, sedated him with a strong narcotic. Aaron now lay stretched out on his bed like a corpse, temporarily released from his tormented soul. Both the doctor and Rivka were mystified as to how my lethargic
brother could suddenly have turned into a brute capable of raping a girl known in the factory as a sweet and rather unremarkable young thing. I told them the same story I had told the police about the drug cocktail Aaron had supposedly taken to cure his depression. That made the doc look up, since my brother had not been to see him in over a year.